


When You Feel My Silence

by rowofstars



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Pete's World, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-15
Updated: 2011-04-15
Packaged: 2018-04-18 00:54:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4686077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowofstars/pseuds/rowofstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's not used to a Rose who doesn't want to be touched.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When You Feel My Silence

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the utterly amazing [](http://professor-spork.livejournal.com/profile)[professor_spork](http://professor-spork.livejournal.com/) for the occasion of her birthday, though a bit on the belated side. ♥HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!♥ I love you and I hope you like this. The prompt is the summary above. Thanks as always to my darling braintwin, [](http://stillxmyxheart.livejournal.com/profile)[stillxmyxheart](http://stillxmyxheart.livejournal.com/) for the beta work, the encouragement, the eggs and the potato. ♥

He slips his hand in hers, fingers sliding and curling together, as perfect as the first time, even though he was all ears and leather and rough edges back then. She looks up at him, bewildered and lost, and his single heart aches so profoundly he wonders how he will ever fit all this love in just one when he could barely contain it in two.

She sniffs loudly and looks away towards the water, shrugging her hand free, and his eyes follow hers. They stay like that for a moment, watching as water clashes with sand, roiling and tumbling, scratching and pulling. He opens his mouth and says something about tidal forces and gravity. When he gets to the partial differential equations involved he knows he’s rambling just to fill the space and stops abruptly.

Her hand comes up, fingers catching a strand of hair whipping against her cheek and pulls it away from her mouth. His hands find his pockets and he wiggles his toes, frowning at the red canvas of his trainers as the damp slowly seeps inside. Then she turns on her heel and strides away without a word.

He stares after her for sixty-three seconds, and then follows in silence.

She can sense him just a short distance behind her, slogging through the wet sand in squidgy shoes, his hands characteristically buried in his pockets. Part of her wants to turn around but a bigger part of her can’t reconcile him, or any of this, into anything that makes sense. None of this turned out like she planned, but then she’s not sure it ever would have.

At least she won’t be the only one left feeling abandoned.

 

 

* * *

 

 

_The first thing he ever did was touch her._

_Before a word –_ the word _– left his mouth, his hand was wrapped firmly around hers, cool and wide and strong, and instantly she went from being afraid to excited like it was the most normal thing in the world to want to run for your life. Their fingers were so tight and he was just a little bit faster with all those long lean legs, but she kept up just fine and some part of him knew right then she was one of the best._

_He vowed he wouldn’t ask twice, but the universe had already decided for him._

 

 

* * *

 

 

He doesn’t sleep that first night. He lies awake on top of the sheets, hands folded over his chest. The flow of time in this universe makes him queasy, it feels too fast, tastes too – _purple_. He lifts a hand and stares at it, gliding it slowly back and forth through the air, feeling the warm tingle of seconds as they slide through his fingers. He has been alive for less than two days and already he is dying.

Beside him, under the sheets, she sleeps. There are exactly three inches of space between them.

His arm crosses the distance, the back of his hand pressing lightly against her spine, and it’s enough to ground him, dull everything swirling in and through his head. Then she rolls away, onto her stomach, hand flopping over the edge of the bed, and just like that he is lost again.

 

 

* * *

 

 

_He thinks she’s jeopardy friendly. She thinks he must enjoy sitting in damp dingy alien prison cells._

_The truth is that sometimes we-successfully-went-to-the-market-on-Zeta-Prime-and-bought-Peruvian-bananas hugs get a bit boring._

 

 

* * *

 

 

She makes tea and for some reason he finds it absurd. He is sitting in Rose Tyler’s flat, in London, in a parallel universe with zeppelins, no orange marmalade and time that tastes purple. He wiggles his toes, scrunching them inside his socks and pushing into the plush living room rug, resisting the urge to jump up and run and run and run until he can’t feel the ground through the calluses on his feet.

She maneuvers the tray onto the table a little awkwardly, and smiles, but it’s not right. There is none of her usual tongue and teeth and tease, and the smile he gives back is tight and equally wrong.

The silence is careful between them.

She tucks herself into the corner of the sofa, hands wrapped around her cup, watching him without trying to look like she’s watching and failing miserably. She bites the inside of her mouth, not knowing what to say, and he sips his tea quietly, stopping only to add a touch more sugar.

“You can be angry, you know,” he says finally. His eyes are on the cream colored swirl on the corner of the rug.

“I’m not,” she replies too quickly. Then she adds a moment later, “Not at you.”  
  
He nods as if he understands and leans forward to refill his cup. She shakes her head and sighs. She knows he hasn’t got a clue.

 

 

* * *

 

 

_After Utah and the Dalek and that mess on Satellite 5 they gave up all the pretenses. If his fingers reached out a little to find hers and his pinky tugged her a little closer, or if she padded into the console room in her pink flannel pajamas and wrapped her arms around him from behind while he recalibrated the navigation matrix, well so much the better._

 

 

* * *

 

 

He nicks a few things from Torchwood, little parts he’s certain no one will miss, intent on building a new sonic screwdriver because even while his pockets aren’t bigger on the inside anymore there’s still plenty of unused space.

His first attempt goes a bit pear shaped and he spends an entire afternoon tracking down an identical microwave to replace the slightly more melted version created by a miscalculation of spanning frequencies.

The second effort results in the shower curtain crashing down on his head and as his vision blurs he swears he’s going to regenerate right there on the bathroom floor, his elbow knocking against the toilet.

He tells her none of this.

She knows anyway.

 

 

* * *

 

 

_The presence of Jack makes him worse, makes him crave more, and his jealousy is just a little bit this side of dangerous. He sees the smug bastard hold her left hand, skim the back of his hand over her shoulder and down her arm, too bare in that slip of a top she’s wearing._

_Later, when they step out of the TARDIS, he steps around Jack, and holds firmly to her_ left _hand. The two men share a look and the message is clear._

_Later still, under the guise of smoothing a few wayward strands of hair, his fingers brush her collarbone, lips following and trailing down her arm, erasing the fingerprints of another that only he can see. She shivers and sighs._

 

 

* * *

 

 

He tugs open the refrigerator door and sighs. Bending down, he eyes the contents hoping to find a jar of jam or maybe a banana hiding in the back, but the stores appear to be quite bare.

“How bad is it?” she asks from the doorway.

“Well,” he replies, drawing out the word in the usual way he does when he’s already started answering before he actually has all of the answer. “There’s – a few – um, eggs? Three eggs, actually.” He looks up and she raises a skeptical eyebrow. “Three eggs and a potato.”

Smirking, she moves to stand near him and pulls out a collection of take out menus from a drawer. Fanning them like cards she holds them out and he smiles, reaching out to pluck one from the middle.

Hours later they sit quietly in the living room, at opposite ends of the couch. Her bare feet are curled under her legs, purple polished toes poking out from under the grey of her sweats. He’s still in his suit, of course, though his tie and shoes are long since discarded. There’s a book on quantum chemistry in his lap, and he’s casually flipping pages, skimming the equations as though it were just a magazine.

She swirls the wine in her glass and takes another sip, giving the television a cursory glance. She thinks about getting a refill, about opening another bottle, about bridging this stifling distance between them. But words are hard to come by these days.

“I’m not nineteen anymore,” she says finally.

He looks up from his book and frowns at her.

“It’s been four years.” Her eyes are on the deep burgundy puddle in the bottom of her glass as she speaks, and she waits for his quiet _oh_ of understanding before she continues. “I had – _have_ – a job here. I have friends and my family and this flat and –” She waves a hand as if to indicate the contents of her flat, coffee table, sofa and all were summarily included in her list.

“Of course you do,” he says, swallowing against the lump in his throat.

She doesn’t know any other way to say it. “It’s different. _I’m_ different.”

She bites her lip and then sighs, letting her head fall forward. She watches as his fingers flex over the fabric of his trousers, brown and properly pinstriped. Then she tips her head back and drains the rest of the glass.

His skin itches to touch her. He aches to take her hand again and feel that she’s real and solid and not on the other side of some wall. He needs her to ground him. But she doesn’t seem to want him to, always shying away or slipping out of reach whenever he tries.

Eventually, he shifts closer and turns to face her, folding one leg up on the cushion. “You’re the same Rose I remember.” She gives him a slight smile and he reaches out a tentative hand to brush her hair back. She tilts her head away and he lets his hand fall, her hair remaining untouched and unruly.

“And you?”

“Oh, you know me,” he starts, unfolding and stretching out his lanky frame, bridging the gap between sofa and coffee table. “Same hair, same gob, same me. “ He smiles. “Same, same.”

“But different?” she asks.

His gaze drops to his hands and he nods almost imperceptibly.

She turns a bit and lets one leg unfold, hanging over the edge of the sofa. “You can be angry too, you know,” she says quietly.

He looks up, holding her eyes for a beat and then reaches out to slip the glass from her hand, setting it on the coffee table. He stays leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, staring at the carpet again. “I’m not.”

“Then what are we doing?”

His head turns to the side. “I don’t know.” And he really doesn’t, not anymore, but then there was a time when neither of them had to ask such questions.

“We’re not good at this.” She sighs and stands, picking up the glass and moving towards the kitchen.

He rubs a hand over his face and then says, “We used to be.”

She stops, in the doorway again, one hand on the trim, the other at her side, fingers wrapped over the edge of the glass.

He pushes himself up and moves to stand behind her. “Rose?”

His voice is so soft that for a moment she’s not sure he said anything at all. Her vision blurs and she squeezes her eyes shut, fighting the tears. She just needs space, needs to get away from him and get these questions out of her head because how can she even begin to figure out who he is when she has no idea who she is anymore.

It’s such a strange moment for an identity crisis, standing in the doorway of her kitchen, but there it is all the same, and she’s finally come to terms with the fact that this is not one of those times where everything works itself out, that this is just one big mess. She wants to say it all out loud, scream at him that she was brave and strong and resourceful and brilliant, but look where that got her.

Really she just needs to understand who he is – twin? – clone? – something, anything but the Doctor, her Doctor, because if he is then her heart shouldn’t be breaking this badly.

“I’m sorry,” he says.  
  
Her voice is sharp. “ _Don’t_.” She stalks into the kitchen, sets the glass in the sink and then whirls on him. “I don’t want you to be sorry.”

“Then tell me what you want me to be!”

She freezes and he didn’t mean to shout but he just can’t take this limbo anymore. His anger still sits too close to the surface.

“I just –,” she starts, and then runs a hand through her hair as she bites her lip. She watches him stand there, waiting for whatever the end of that sentence is, and she tries not to think about how that feels.

She takes a breath. “I just want to be us again.”

And it’s the first time she’s felt any sense of an answer.

When his palm slides over her cheek, fingers seeking her hair, she shuts her eyes and starts to turn away. There’s a knot in her stomach and a whole line of excuses running through her head, but none of them seem like enough anymore.

“Rose,” he says again and she meets his eyes.

 

 

* * *

 

 

_He went and changed on her, the prat._

_And it wasn’t that she was mad (and she was definitely that) but her mind was all fuzzy and everything was happening too fast. There was a song in her head and she couldn’t remember the words, but then she wasn’t sure she ever knew them at all. The worst of it was how he was just suddenly_ different. __

 _Then he took her hand and it was that moment all over again, the fear morphing into something else, the tingle in her legs and it was just so very_ right.

 

 

* * *

 

 

She does not remember who moved first.

What she does remember is the press of the counter against her back and how soft his mouth was.

Soft green sheets break their fall and then it’s touch, touch, touch, and the friction of skin, their bodies, cells, atoms pressing and colliding _finally_. She has a fist in his hair and her eyes are closed, back arching under the cool tingle of his tongue. His hands can’t quite get enough of the smooth skin of her hip and while there will be the faintest of marks there in the morning, when she rolls them over and he finds himself on his back, it’s impossible to care.

The morning light spreads over the bed in lines, pushing through the gaps in the curtains. She watches his fingers slip between hers, folding over her knuckles and settling perfectly palm to palm, wrist to wrist. He holds their hands up, casting odd shadows on the wall and soaking the warmth of the sun into their skin. Then he straightens his fingers, lines them up with hers and she marvels at how hands so big can wrap around hers and not make her feel small at all, but somehow larger, than this flat, than Torchwood, larger than all of this. And it doesn’t matter that they are confined to more conventional modes of transport because nothing about them has ever been very conventional.

“Where do you want to go?” he asks softly, following the veins of her wrist with his thumb.

She smiles and slides her hand over his arm, scraping lightly with her nails from his elbow to his wrist. He makes a soft little noise and she replies, “Nowhere. Anywhere.”

His mouth curves slightly. “Both excellent choices.”

She laughs and for the first time in this new, new, _new_ body, he feels found.


End file.
